Entry Qualifications and Academic Performance of Architecture Students in Building Structures
No Thumbnail Available
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Description
A prerequisite for admission into higher education in Nigeria is meeting the criteria set by the National
Universities Commission (NUC). Apart from obtaining acceptable scores in the unified matriculation
examinations, candidates are also expected to obtain at least credit grades in some subjects at the
end of their secondary school education. For architecture these prerequisite subjects include physics
and mathematics. However, there have been debates in recent times as to the relevance of these
prerequisites to students’ academic performance after admission. This has been necessitated by
suggestions that university students’ performance do not always reflect their pre-admission academic
performance. It is in the light of this that this paper examines the correlation between the scores of
students of architecture in some admission prerequisite subjects (mathematics and physics) and
building structures - a core course for the study of architecture in Nigerian universities. The study
adopts a combination of primary and secondary data. Data were obtained through literature survey,
archival retrieval of students’ records and augmented by discussions with course tutors and students.
Quantitative data was analyzed using the SPSS (version17) while content analysis was used for
qualitative data. This paper found that except for the second semester of the second year of
architecture studies, there exists no correlation between admission qualification and academic
performance of students. However, it found that female students outperformed their male counterparts
in all the semesters. It is hoped that the outcome of this paper will inform university admission policy
especially for architecture and ensure that the best candidates are given opportunity to study
Keywords
NA Architecture